Box-Office Oracle: It’s ‘The Vow’ vs. ‘Safe House’ vs. ‘Journey 2’ vs. ‘Star Wars’ – Yikes!
By
Laremy Legel
It’s bounce back weekend for the box office, there’s no football to keep people home on Sunday and four new releases are available. Women, families, and Denzel fans are well represented, and the top twelve should bring in a tidy $136m this weekend. Let’s break this thing down!
Laremy predicted the #1 movie correctly 4 Weeks In A Row
Tracking is around $30m, and I’ve seen predictions in the $20s. I’m going bigger here, as women are still vastly under-served at the box office – plus, after Super Bowl weekend they can essentially force a date to see The Vow. Man up, fellas. Take one for the team. If you’re looking for historical precedent I give you Dear John.
As of publish time the four new releases ranged from 47 to 60 percent on RottenTomatoes, so there’s no clear “quality” play here. Thus, the film with the most targeted demographic looks poised to strike. Congrats, The Vow.
What will this $30m+ opening mean for the leads? Well, anything above $30.4m will put it above Dear John for second place on Tatum’s resume (trailing only G.I. Joe). An opening at $34m will give it the bronze medal for Rachel McAdams, besting Wedding Crashers and only trailing both films in the Sherlock Holmes franchise. As such, you could very easily make the case that this is the biggest weekend for both of their careers, most of their projects have been either smaller or more ensemble based.
A very difficult film to project because the call measures the fatigue of audiences for 3-D and re-releases vs. their desire to take kids to to potentially see this for the first time.
The first one was released in July, whereas this is getting the February treatment. That pretty much tells you all you need to know, right? But the family dollar will be there.
$111m worldwide, and what could it have cost to bring in? Sideways was around $16m, so even if you call this at $35m they are still looking at a very nice windfall.
